(speaking in foreign language)
- I asked him if he wanted
to fuck me in the kitchen (laughs)
(crew laughing)
("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy")
- I grew up in an environment
in which there was Cantonese and Tagalog.
And the first couple of years
of grad school I taught the introduction class
to linguistic anthropology.
- I speak Korean, Japanese, Portuguese.
- I'm from Detroit, so like, Ebonics.
- It's a form of English.
- Yes.
- Yes, yes!
- Oh, okay, that sounds cool.
- (chuckles) Yeah, I'm nervous.
- Am I blindfolded?
(sighs)
- That wasn't part of signup
'cause I don't like being blindfolded.
I wore a hat today 'cause I didn't do my hair.
(laughing)
- I know what you're speaking but
I don't know what you're saying to me
and it makes me feel scared.
(laughing)
- Could you ask me, hi, how are you doing?
(laughs)
- Can you insult me?
Say, I hate you, black man.
- Wait, what'd you call me? (laughing)
(clapping knees)
(speaking in foreign language)
(crew chuckling)
(laughing)
- The language she is speaking is derivative of Spanish.
- It's not?
Okay say, say brother.
- Nope, it's not Spanish.
(laughs)
- [Crew Member] Wow.
- Were you screaming at me in Portuguese?
- Yeah. - Okay good.
- I was born in the city, in countryside
of Sao Paulo state in Brazil. - Okay.
- Yeah yeah yeah. - Yes.
I speak Portuguese.
- Portuguese, okay because-- - It is a Latin, yeah.
- You were, I got the Latin part at the beginning
'cause there were a lot of familiar words.
And like, so it's a little bit different,
and I don't know Portuguese. - Yeah,
it's 100% the word that people think
that I speak when I'm speaking Portuguese.
People think I'm speaking Spanish.
- Can you teach me something in Portuguese?
- Oi is hi. - Oi.
(speaking in foreign language)
- And your name.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- Portuguese, I was close, I was close.
- I don't know if I've ever heard this language, what.
- Yell something like, like angry, like fuck, you know?
- Say the name Hitler.
- She's German, out, German.
- I mean it sounds Germanic.
- Okay, I'm asking if she understands high German.
- So knowledgeable. (laughs)
- That's some type of Asian, I'm not sure what Asian,
but they speak real fast,
and it's like (imitates speaking foreign language)
- Oh, ah
He kind of understands both my languages.
I feel, defeated. (both laughing)
- Can I look? (giggles)
- Okay, oh, hello. - Hello.
- Oh, you're very pretty. - Oh, thank you.
- She's Russian.
- Russian's have to be pretty.
- Usually, usually.
- Dutch, no, no.
- Russian? - Think, ooh!
- German, Taiwanese?
- (imitating buzzer) Should I tell him?
- Are you uh? - I was speaking Flemish.
- Oh, Flemish, oh. - And Belgian.
Very very similar to Dutch, it's just kind of
like a dialect honestly.
It's what's spoken in Belgium. - Okay.
- Which is where my dad is from.
And the second one I was speaking is Chinese
'cause my mom is Chinese and so
I learned those two languages from my parents
and a little bit in school as well.
- Very cool, yeah. - Yeah.
- Ooh.
- Ooh, say my name again?
- Carlos. - Oh, see you said it first,
say it with something else.
- It's definitely from a Middle Eastern countries or
speaking it, a language from a Middle Eastern country,
like maybe, or maybe a North African country?
- Can you count to 10 for me? - Yeah.
- Hmm, ha.
- How do you say thank you?
(speaking in foreign language)
- Fuck, I have no idea. - Yeah?
- I mean I think this might actually be
somewhere in the Middle East, uh, maybe?
- I'm going with Egyptian.
Oh, hi. - How are you doing?
- Okay, okay.
- Did you think I would look like this?
- No, I didn't, I didn't. - OK.
- He's speaking Egyptian.
If that isn't even a fucking language.
- Was it? - No, no, no. (chuckling)
- Oh, wait. - No, so it's not Egyptian.
Nah, (laughs) I told you I'm not speaking Egyptian,
I'm speaking Amharic. - What is that?
- Amaringa is Amharic. - What's that?
- My parents are from Ethiopia.
- Oh, okay. - Yeah.
- Is there any like, influence from the
Arabic language into Amharic?
- Kinda, so Arabic, Amaringa, and Amharic and
Hebrew, they're all like
Semitic languages. - Okay.
- So it comes from like that base.
In the country of Ethiopia there's over like
80 dialects and Amaringa, so Amharic, what I'm
speaking is considered like, one of
the most like beautiful dialects.
- I don't think it's very beautiful.
(crowd chuckles)
(imitating foreign language)
But it's not a romantic language the way it sounds.
- Could you share some sentences in your language please?
- What about, like, counting one to 10.
- Yeah, I could do that. - Okay.
- Oh.
- Say mom.
- Say dad.
- Say hello.
- Oh, I've never heard any of these.
- Can you say um, thank you?
- Oh fuck, I have no idea.
- I've never heard any of these words before.
I'm gonna go with Indian.
You kinda look Indian.
(both laughing)
- Pretty close.
Kurdish. - Oh.
- Do you know what it is? - I knew.
Oh, I do know what Kurdish is. - Have you heard of it?
You do?
Oh. - Yeah I know.
- Oh that's surprising. - I'm all free Kurdistan,
for sure. - Oh wow, a lot of
people don't know.
- Well I'm from Northern Iraq,
but you can be like Armenian, Sierran, Turkish.
There's even like, Russians.
The Kurdish people, yeah. - Oh, really, wow.
- Yeah, so 'cause we don't have our own countries
it's kinda all over the place.
- Oh, okay. - Yeah.
- Oh my god.
(crowd laughing)
- Oh my gosh, you're speaking a Slavic language.
- Okay, how do you say I'm a dirty girl?
(laughing)
- Romanian?
Or like, Ukrainian? - Polish?
- You speak something from that Belarus, Ukraine,
Latvia, Estonia area? - Mhm.
- Yeah, can you just tell me? - It's Ukrainian.
- Ah, hmm - So you guessed it.
- Yeah, kinda yeah. - Kinda, yeah.
- Did I get any? - You did guess it right.
- Really, was it Romanian? - It was Ukrainian.
- Can you teach me something giggles in Ukrainian?
- (speaks in foreign language) is fuck your mother.
- Yes, is that, I don't know if that's funny,
that's kinda sad, but.
- Ciao.
- Hey, how are you?
- I'm good. - Good.
- Go ahead.
- I have no idea.
- Clearly speaking some kinda African language
the second time. - Why?
- 'Cause he said hakuna matata, what's next.
- He's French. (speaking in foreign language)
(laughing) I just slaughtered that.
- There's three languages you just spoke?
- Yeah. - Okay.
Hmm, hi, hmm. - Hey.
- At first I was gonna lean more towards
maybe like, a French-ish language.
- Okay.
- But then seeing you I'm like, okay you're brown.
- First one was Kinyarwanda.
- Kinyarwanda?
- Yeah, it's called Kinyarwanda.
- Oh, where's it from?
- Rwanda. (laughing)
- Oh Rwanda, okay, okay, okay.
- Then, the second one was uh,
Swahili, which is kind of used in East Africa.
- And the third one was French.
- The third one was French, yeah.
- Oh, shit, that's crazy.
Nice, man. (laughing)
- So in Rwanda we speak like,
four national languages.
So there is French, English, Kinyarwanda,
and Swahili, like, we're in the East African blocks
so we speak Swahili.
- Speak your language, girl.
- Asian, go ahead.
Definitely Asian.
- Oh.
- She sounds like my nail tech,
so I'm gonna go with Korean.
Not to be racist.
- Are you Korean?
Shit. - That's not Mandarin.
That's not? - I can speak Mandarin,
but that's not Mandarin.
- Yeah, and that's not Cantonese.
Like I didn't recognize that.
- It's Shanghainese.
- Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- A lot of people don't know that it's even like,
a dialect but it's spoken in Shanghai.
- Oh, okay, that's crazy.
- The language is kind of like, fading
because a lot of the younger people
aren't speaking it anymore.
Like, for a while you couldn't speak it in school,
like, it wasn't allowed for you to speak it
with your friends at school,
because they wanted you to speak Mandarin
'cause that's what like, the global language
all over China is.
Like, my grandparents, my parents, they all speak it,
but then whenever they address the younger kids
like, they just switch to Mandarin.
And like, they're usually always really surprised
that I can understand and speak Shanghainese.
Now I kinda, I wanna like, teach my kids
Shanghainese too, just to keep it alive.
- Keep it going, yeah, okay.
I'm learning all of these new languages
I didn't even know, so this is dope.
Thank you so much for sharing that with me.
I appreciate it.
- Yeah. (laughing)
- Hey. (laughing)
- Did you do your homework?
(both laughing)
- Hello?
- (speaking in foreign language)
- Oh no, that's not.
(crowd laughs)
- She came out with (speaks in foreign language),
but I don't know that second line.
What was, would you say that second line?
Not familiar.
- Ah, this is too easy.
- She just said hi to me,
like hi how are you?
- She's some type of, like, Asian mix with
like, an island, 'cause she has like a lot of
Latino, like in Spanish derivatives but like,
she's definitely Asian.
- Getting warm, getting warm. - Guam?
What is it? - Tagalog.
- What is that? - Philippines.
From the Philippines, yeah. - Philippines,
which is literally, like they shouldn't put
it in a Latino place.
(laughing)
- Hello. - How did you learn?
- Well, well no, I am Filipino.
People don't think that though.
- Oh, okay.
- I learned English more than I did Tagalog.
- Can I ask you like, why you think your parents
didn't like, teach you it?
Or you weren't taught it?
- 'Cause.
(crowd laughing)
They're shameful.
Just kidding, hopefully they don't get offended by that.
- I think it's a very real thing, yeah.
- Mhm, yeah.
'Cause I think the thought process is that
in order to succeed you're gonna have to
speak the language of the majority.
- Yeah, and it's like, a lot of our parents
come here and they're like,
you know, they've worked so hard to get here and
they've sacrificed so much and
they just want the best for their children and
you know it's coming from that kind of love.
But it doesn't always like, you know,
pan out for like, the best for the child,
as far as like, their identity, cultural identity.
(drum roll)
Thank you. - Thanks.
- It was fun, it was really fun 'cause now I have
all these other languages that I wanna learn.
- Yeah, I definitely would wanna get some lessons
from sunshine, who speaks Tagalog.
- Hey hey. - Yeah, what's up, yeah.
- I think it was really cool to learn how,
I think interconnected languages are.
There's a lot of similarities between a lot of
different languages and once you look at the
history in it, it makes sense.
So I think this is pretty dope.
- No, I felt really guilty about like,
trying to guess where people's languages come from.
Doing the linguistic profiling thing.
- Well I know like everyone here volunteered for it and
it's all fun and games but uh,
like, I don't know, there are real
consequences out in the world when
people try to profile using language.
Like, kinds of assumptions people make.
- Go learn a language, bitch.
(crowd applauding)